Crossbow, the next generation Windows Mobile OS, looks to be shaping up quite nicely. We covered some potential features before, but this is the first screenshot we've seen of the new front page. To us, it looks a lot like Vista, except greener and smaller. It's much more "unified" in terms of icons and screens, which looks a lot like the Vista theme I've installed on my Windows Mobile 5 phone.

Microsoft is still busy working on push-email for Windows Mobile 5, but they've found the time …
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Other upcoming features are a strong link to Office 2007 and Exchange 12 for push emails and other features, and also instant messaging built in. No doubt it's going to be Windows Live Messenger, so AIM and ICQ users will have to install third party software again. Crossbow looks to be released to manufacturers at the end of 2006 and in phones around Q1/Q2 2007. Crossbow's successor should be available sometime Q1/Q2 2008, so there's something to look forward to.

In our opinion, we'd Crossbow's shaping up to look really great, but hopefully its stability is improved over WM5. – Jason Chen